Thursday, January 19, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
When Physics Becomes Metaphysics: Books Review for "New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy"
When Physics Becomes
Metaphysics
Taking karate as a child, my instructor
used to tell his students that the two most dangerous degrees of skill in the
world of karate are the black belt (highest degree and most skilled) and the
white belt (lowest degree and least skilled).
The student who achieves the degree of black belt is dangerous because
he has the skill to harm and knows well that he can harm, yet he does not. The student with a white belt is dangerous
because he has not yet realized that he can harm and has not yet learned the
restraint and self-discipline to not harm.
As an educator, I find in regards to
the sciences, many of my students are white belts capable of tearing down
philosophical arguments by means of science without the restraint, respect or
self-discipline necessary to give an honest and thorough examination of any
philosophical argument or scientific theorem.
Some of my former students who attempted the exercise of tearing down
theological arguments, were more interested in trying to disprove God and
validate their supposed atheism by using science with the same dangerous skill
of the white belt. The result was that they not only did they show evidence of their
misunderstanding of theology, but they also misrepresented science in the
process.
While studying and teaching theology
for the past seven years, some of the questions my students proposed: “What
does the Church think about a bouncing universe, if it’s true does it mean
there’s no God?” “How do we know there
isn’t a multiverse or a parallel dimension?”
The questions were often prompted by some recent episode of Dr. Who or a special on the Discovery
Channel or History Channel. The viewing
of complex scientific theories in such miniscule portions from companies more
interested in ratings than honest science left my student with malformed ideas
and theories of their own. Yet, too
often I was unable to respond directly to my students’ questions about the
relation between God and science beyond “God created the universe and all that
is in it. So how can science, which
tells us how the world works, oppose God who made the world work the way it
does?” Though it was an answer to my
students, I never felt it was a sufficient answer.
How I wish I had Father Robert
Spitzer’s book New Proofs for the
Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy five
years ago when I started working with smart aleck students. For Father Spitzer lays flat with black belt
precision some of the very questions my students would ask me.
The purpose of the book “is to set out
the specific evidential bases for this convergent probability in which science
plays an integral role” (23). Spitzer does this by using John Henry Newman’s
“informal inference,” which is an argument that takes into account all the
evidence in order to make a compelling, converging, and convincing argument.
Both Newman’s and Spitzer’s method are quite different from many of the more
well known proofs for the existence of God, which seek to provide, in a single
locale, an argument aimed to kill any doubt as to whether or not God
exists. Instead, Spitzer takes the
reader on a philosophical, scientific, and metaphysical journey through the
cosmos, beginning with the Big Bang and ending with the eternal longings of the
human heart. He clearly shows the
numerous instances, often brushed off as mere coincidences when examined
individually, for the necessity of the existence of a Creator.
Father Spitzer brings together all of
the current scientific and philosophical coincidences and present them to the
reader with the underlying question: “When do coincidences stop being coincidences?”
Certainly one can ignore an isolated incident as just a mere coincidence, but
how many coincidences, all of which point to the same conclusion, are required
before they pass from coincidence to truth: three, ten, twenty? Yet, when those
coincidences are brought out of isolation and presented together as a coherent
whole, in intellectual honesty, they cannot be ignored. To view otherwise is
like the man who erroneously assumes that it is only by mere coincidence that a
group of musicians happened to assemble on the same stage, all wearing similar
dress, with an exact number and complementary instruments, and who all happen
to be playing melodies and harmonies that fit together as if someone arranged
it to be so.
Though the book’s title is New proofs for the Existence of God,
several of the proofs are not entirely new, as there are several lines of
arguments which echo Aquinas’ Five Ways,
and Chapter Four is dedicated to a Lonergain argument for an unconditional,
absolute, simple and unrestricted reality.
The newness of the proofs lie not in philosophical methodology, but in
the science Spitzer applies to the classic philosophical methods in providing
both empirical and metaphysical data that supports the traditional
arguments. Spitzer inserts into several
of these traditional arguments findings and examples from contemporary physics
and demonstrates by appealing to the laws of thermodynamics, the universal
constants, the radiation and entropy paradoxes, and the miniscule likelihood of
an anthropic universe that God exists.
Divided into three parts and eight
chapters, the first part is primarily concerned with the idea of a supernatural
design in the universe and the limitations of the physical sciences.
In chapter one, titled “Indications of
Creation in Big Bang Cosmology,” Spitzer explains how the Big Bang is believed
to have happened, why the universe is not a “bouncing” universe, and the
metaphysical implications of a beginning. Briefly stated, a bouncing universe
is a universe that expands and once expansion has reached a certain point the
universe collapses on itself and starts again; that is, the universe bounces
back to its original state and starts the process of expansion anew. In looking
at a bouncing universe, Spitzer appeals to the second law of thermodynamics and
two paradoxes to help demonstrate why a bouncing universe is not plausible and
indeed would not disprove God.
The second law of thermodynamics states
that over time the flow of nature is an irreversible process moving in one
direction, and gives testimony to the fact that the universe seeks
equilibrium. By nature moving in one
direction, it becomes impossible for the world to expand, collapse, and
bounce. We know the second law of
thermodynamics to be true because it is witnessed, though not acknowledge, by
people everyday: hot coffee turning to cold coffee, youth growing old, and the
pressure from a soda can escaping upon being popped open. In short, when
science examines the way the world works, science sees the universe “moving” in
one direction but never in reverse. Without the second law of thermodynamics
being true, the universe would be able to move forward as well as backwards,
which would make for an interesting universe more akin to science fiction than
natural science.
Father Spitzer then appeals to the
radiation paradox to further demonstrate why the universe is not bouncing. The radiation paradox states that 99% of all light
is background radiation and only 1% is from other sources. With each ‘bounce’ all the visible light and
background radiation would be folded into the bounce of the next cycle and
become the background radiation of the new cycle. Yet, this cannot be the case for two
reasons. First it violates the second
law of thermodynamics and makes the universe into a perpetual motion
machine. Second it cannot be the case as
new light sources (stars) are still be formed where as all the visible light is
1% now, that percentage increases with each new light source. Therefore, the universe is not in a state for
perpetual bouncing and at some point in time it had a beginning.
The second of the paradoxes Father
Spitzer employs is the entropy paradox.
Entropy is the measure of disorder in the universe or the lost energy
that in unavailable to be converted into mechanical work. With a bouncing universe, one would expect
the entropic energy to be exceptionally high.
However what is found is that at the moment of the Big Bang the entropy
of the universe was “fantastically small” (29).
So small in fact that sciences has been puzzled by the fantastically
small amount of entropy for years. It is
readily observed that the disorder of the universe is only growing in degree
and never grows in reverse. Therefore,
if the universe had bounced or has been bouncing, the current universe would
have originated not from a fantastically small entropy that science has been
puzzling over for years but from a large, disorganized, entropic universe.
The second Chapter, “Indication of
Supernatural Design in Contemporary Big Bang Cosmology,” focuses on three main
points: “Universal constants” and the need of those constants in order for
there to be an anthropic universe (gravitation force, earth’s distance from the
sun, time, space, rest mass of a proton), the extreme unlikelihood of an
anthropic universe, and whether or not there is a multiverse. Citing physicist Sir Roger Penrose, Spitzer
gives the likelihood (or the unlikelihood) of an anthropic universe as 1 in 10^(10^123).
Random chance alone would have miniscule window in which to make a universe
capable of sustaining life. To get an
idea of how incredibly unlikely an anthropic universe is, Spitzer writes, “This
number is so large that if we were to write it out in ordinary notation (with
every zero being, say, ten point type), it would fill up a large portion of the
universe” (59)!
Part one concludes with an introduction
to string theory by Dr. Bruce L. Gordon. The conclusion seemed unnecessary for
the scope of the book. This essay will
certainly be slow going for those who are not up to date with modern physics
and the terms used by the physicists. Moreover, the remainder of the text can
be just as easily understood by skipping Dr. Gordon’s essay.
Part Two of the book is aimed at the
philosophical proofs for the existence of God.
Chapter three and four are closely
linked, as the author spends all of chapter three proving the existence of a
simple, absolute, unique, and unconditioned reality, which Spitzer concludes is
the Creator of all. Chapter four is spent in applying what was concluded from
Chapter Three to Lonergain’s argument in Chapter four. Additions are made to
the data from chapter three in that now intelligibility, understanding and
being are brought to the forefront of the arguments.
Specifically in chapter three Father
Spitzer’s seeks the one unconditioned reality, that is simple. This unconditioned reality, a portion of
reality not dependent upon other conditions of realities, is a necessity. There
must be at least one unconditioned reality, argues Spitzer. If there is no
unconditioned reality then the most fundamental component of creation is
actually nonexistence itself, as it allows for only conditioned realities emerging
from nothing (nothing can depend on nothing for its existence) or a circular
set of conditions in which everything is dependent upon everything else for its
existence. Yet, because all is dependent
upon each other it does not allow for the possibility of anything as “B” would
be dependent on “A” and “C” on “B” and likewise “A” dependent on “C.” Because each is dependent on the other the
outcome is either nothing or everything at once. So Spitzer argues for the necessity of at
least one unconditioned reality.
The unconditioned reality must be
simple because simplicity implies fewer restrictions and fewer boundaries
thereby granting the simplest of reality the ability to do more. Spitzer calls this simplest of realities “Absolute
simple reality” which is “pure power and pure simplicity, pure act, pure
inclusivity, pure being and pure capacity to unify all being” ( page ?) Though Spitzer does not refer to the absolute
simple reality as God, it is clear that that there is much of God echoing in
the definition. Moreover, it might be
deduced that it is only by unbounded limitless nature and power of the absolute
simple reality, that which is pure power, which is capable of crossing the
infinite chasm of non-existence to existence.
Currently the simplest of structures
postulated in physics is the quark, which is/are the subatomic building blocks
of the atomic particles. But the
question remains to be answered, are quarks the unconditioned reality Spitzer
seeks or will physics find something smaller that makes up quarks? Furthermore what keeps the quarks
together? One can only speculate it to
be the pneuma.
Chapter five covers how an infinite
past is not possible and why it is a mathematical contradiction to have an
infinite set contained within a finite world. This chapter is interesting if
the reader has any passion in the ontological nature of time and how the views
of time have changed from Aristotle -- who viewed time as the measurement of
change/motion – to Einstein where time not only measures motion but also effect
reality and that the physical world (matter) effects the measurement of time,
which is visible in Einstein’s famous E=mc2 where the relationship
of time, matter, light, distance, and velocity are made clear, and how time has
changed in contemporary philosophy with Whitehead and other philosophers where
time became a “real aggregative structure” (179). That is, time is the structure of the sum
total of a collection of particles or particulars.
Regardless of contemporary theorem, time
sets a limit on existence -- something Spitzer implies but does not seem to
draw out in the text. If there is time
of any sort, it implies that there is also space and matter. For time is intimately connected to space and
matter. Without space or matter there
would be no need for time. Following
from the informal inferences presented on the origins of the universe and the
previous chapters it should be clear at this point in the text that matter has
a beginning, and if there is matter there is space, and if there is matter and
space there is time. Therefore, because
matter has a beginning it follows that time too has a beginning, and there is
no infinite past.
Upon reaching the end of chapter five, this
reader is reminding of St. Augustine’s famous comment on time in his Confessions: "If no one asks me, I
know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know."
Chapter six’s focus is on methodology
and "the Impossibility of Disproving God," Spitzer gives three
arguments on why God cannot be disproved. The first rests on the impossibility
for a person to experience all there is to experience. There is no absolute certainty to the claim
that “God does not exist” until the person has experienced all there is to
experience. The second argument falls in the realm of the intrinsic properties
of God. Spitzer writes that God has no intrinsic properties; therefore, God
cannot be contradicted by means of intrinsic boundaries. The third argument,
piggy backing off the second, is set in the realm of non-contradiction. A
contradiction assumes boundaries. God has no boundaries. God has no
contradiction.
Also in chapter six is a section titled
“The Tenuous Rationality of Atheism,” in which Spitzer spends less time writing
about the rationality of atheism and more time explaining the problem of evil
and the compatibility of love and suffering. Though, the root cause of atheism
for the author lies not so much in bad science as it does in the poor defining
of terms and false assumptions, on the part of the atheist, as to who God is.
That is to say, the atheist misunderstands who God is. It then becomes clear that the problem with
the atheistic/Christian dialogue concerning God is based on the fundamental
definition of who God is, and without the proper definition, a dialogue cannot
happen. Anyone who has ever been to a Christian v. Atheist debate realizes that
it is as frustrating as arguing with another over whether grapes or oranges
taste more like apples.
Part Three of the book is aimed at what
the author calls “the Transcendentals.”
In Chapter seven, Spitzer articulates
the “five dimensions of absolute simplicity” Those dimensions are, being,
truth, love, goodness, and beauty. There are many references in this chapter to
previous chapters, especially chapters three and four. In chapter eight,
Spitzer then connects the five transcendentals to the longings of the human
heart. Specifically the heart longs for ultimate Home, ultimate Truth, ultimate
Love, ultimate Goodness, and ultimate Beauty: the heart longs for God and
Heaven.
In a world where the myth that faith
and science do not mix and contradict each other is continually perpetuated,
Father Spitzer’s book is a charitable answer dispelling that myth. Father
demonstrates genially that it is completely reasonable to believe in God and
still do honest science. His philosophy is accurate; his language is specific,
and his theology is insightful. Lastly,
Upon completion of this book, I find myself able to have a fuller conversation
with my students as well as the odd fellow I meet at the pubs and cafes who try
to use science as a means to attack God.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
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